Wood Colony Woodworks is a third generation company based in Modesto, California, that specializes in the production of custom solid wood doors.

Jesse Overholtzer now oversees the family business and its daily operations out of a 22,000-square-foot facility that includes 10 employees. When Wood Colony was looking for solutions to enhance the company’s custom manufacturing process, they found the answer in Biesse’s Rover A 5-Axis and bSolid software. It’s been a little over a year since Wood Colony introduced the Rover 5-Axis into its manufacturing mix and Overholtzer continues to rave about the benefits of bSolid. “Nothing compares in the software and software’s where it’s at,” he said. “That makes all the difference. We write every day, and with bSolid, we have the capability of bringing it in. There’s nothing better than a person drawing it themselves and machining it to know what it did. I’m a firm, firm believer when you have a computer or software that another company made, and you’re relying on them to nest or make your parts, nothing’s better than me telling the machine every move.”

Because Wood Colony is a custom shop, it doesn’t view high volume of manufacturing as a primary measure of productivity. Rather, the emphasis is clearly on specialization. “We are not based on numbers by any means,” Overholtzer said. “The reason being it’s just such a custom shop. We can get locked into an extensive project up in Atherton in the Bay area and there will be 60 or 70 doors. That can take us a month but it could be upwards of $200-300,000 for that job. It can take some time. We never look at piece count or volume in that regard. We’re very, very specialized.” Wood Colony’s production process is fairly unique in its sector and the Rover A allows the company to manufacture in its own specialized way. The need for a top-performing 5-Axis router has never been greater. “One thing that we do that is really key to us, and there are very few door shops like us that do what we do, we hang all our doors on our machines,” he said.

“That’s what’s so beneficial. A typical job these days involves about $100-150,000 for a standard door package. We’ve done 325 recently and every door featured custom hardware. The hardware that they’re choosing and how custom everything is, is what makes it so expensive.”Wood Colony’s working relationship with Biesse after the sale has also been a point of emphasis for Overholtzer. He’s been particularly impressed with remote instruction from Biesse’s industry leading technicians. “The service that Biesse has thus far in our relationship is just dynamite,” he said. “When I need help, I can get it. They can hop on to my computer with the Machine Viewer and just guide me and show me what I need. It’s just amazing. You’ve got great service. I can get help any time of the day; I haven’t had to (off hours). But when I do need help, they’re on it. It’s a great relationship.”

“One meeting was all it took. I was pretty convinced at that point. I didn’t know a lot about bSolid, but everything I’d seen at that point sounded really impressive to me. Once I got my hands on bSolid, all I can say is, ‘Wow.’”

Jesse OverholtzerWood Colony Woodworks Owner

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